February 01, 2013

There are places that hold
layered memory, places recognized long ago to hold spiritual density. Our
common ancestors knew such places, gathered and “opened” communication—connection—with
the alignments, the patterns of wind and water, the visual signals of seasons
and moments. There is always revelation in this, if difficult to describe.

San Juan de la Maguana, in
the Dominican Republic (DR), is one of those places where density of space
blends with continued human attachment to the indigenous memory. I was there
with Ranald Woodaman, from the Smithsonian Latino Center, on behalf of NMAI's Caribbean Indigenous Legacies research project. We traveled to various
places in the DR to open up a discussion of our anticipated exhibition Consciousness of Taíno: Caribbean
Indigeneity.

The Indigenous Legacies
project, with collaboration from the National
Museum of Natural History and many others, seeks to understand and appreciate
the variety of Caribbean indigeneity found today in a broad range of topics.

In Santo Domingo, at the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, we met with established figures of Dominican scholarship, including Manuel García Arévalo, Frank Maya Pons, and Bernardo Vega, as well as members of the group Guabancex, a Taíno epistemic, or shared-knowledge, community. Scholars and various participants commented on the ideas and themes of the proposed exhibition and related productions. In Santo Domingo, we also visited museum collections, stopped by to chat with Minister of Culture Jose Antonio Rodriguez, and teamed up with Eduardo Diaz, director of the Smithsonian Latino Center, to host a dinner for the American ambassador, the Honorable Raul Yzaguirre. Later in the week, we would travel to La Romana and Altos de Chavon to visit an accomplished Taíno-based curriculum-development project.

In a country of presumed
extinction of indigenous identity and culture, San Juan de la Maguana—in the island's old cacicazgo of the Taíno queen Anacaona—stands out for its concentration of people who profess and relish the
indigenous heritage of Quisqueya and the Caribbean, broadly identified as
Taíno.

At each of more than 20 kilometers on the highway nearing San Juan markers depict a
sculpted Taíno cemi. Entering town,
the Plaza of Caonabo, with its statue of the tough early cacique breaking his
chains, signals the mentality later expressed by local leaders. Caonabo was
Anacaona’s husband and the chief who wiped out the first Spanish garrison left
by Columbus in the Americas.

At the forum in the Municipal
Center, in her formal greetings, Mayor Hanoi Sánchez made it clear that her
constituents in San Juan de la Maguana take seriously their indigenous
heritage. The mayor has been a leading power behind the strong identification of
civic institutions with indigenous Taíno legacy. She asserted with much pride
that San Juan de la Maguana is the “capital of aboriginal culture” in the
country.

The Native-identification of
the mayor and testimonies by a number of other speakers gave intellectual and
cultural bent to a conversation that invited local and national researchers in
these themes to share their work and to lead us to all possible approaches to
the subject.

As always, some express a belief
in the total extinction of their indigenous roots while many point out pieces
of indigeneity in the puzzle of identity and culture of the area. As always, too,
in these types of meetings in the Greater Antilles, people of apparent Indo-Caribbean
ancestry approach, wanting to explore more of their indigenous culture and
legacy. One middle-aged woman asked for orientation in conducting oral
interviews with her aging mother, “who knows many of our Indian things.” Others
spoke of Indian roots that undergird Afro-Dominican socio-spiritual movements,
music, religious practice, memory in place.

A local group including Dr.
Sobieski de Leon guided us to the Plaza of Anacaona, known locally as the Corral de
Indios. This is a sacred space in the old cacicazgo, a large circular
ceremonial field, with a stone—the Stone of Anacaona—at the center. It was
fascinating to me that the stone is identified as having been in place for more
than five hundred years since the massacres that were committed at this exact
site. A local prayer woman (oradora),
blending Catholic saints and "world alive" practice, normally cares
ceremonially for the stone. However, she was not there for the day.

Respecting the Stone of Anacaona. San Juan de la Maguana, Dominican Republic, 2013.

On behalf of the group, Dr.
Sobieski wondered if we would conduct a greeting ceremony for the Anacaona
Stone, and I acceded. We cleaned up, burned sage, and announced our greetings
to the sacred space of Anacaona's old areito ceremony, located notably near the
exact center of the island. The place and the elements of wind and sun were
with us, strong imaging in the clouds, undeniably a sacred landscape to be
acknowledged and appreciated.

Not far up the mountain, where
roads turned to dirt and stone, we later arrived at the altars of the region's
Liborio tradition. This, too, is a context of sacred landscape, a sacred water
place still guarded by young men of descendant families.

Liborio is a legendary figure—clairvoyant,
curandero, natural mystic leader of
the early 20th century. Christ-like for some, source of inspiration and
spiritual strength for many, Liborio left a legacy in the history and memory of
his intense and extensive movement. Liborio's blessing of the water at this
site is remembered in the ritual and bathing in the mountain’s sacred water, observance
that strongly persists.

Here, too, we offered our
respects to the cave altar, the “path of crosses,” and the sacred water. In
conversations with the young people guarding the site and with
ethno-documentalist Ariel Mota and scholars Fatima Portorreal and Glenis
Tavares, all gave testimony of many family ceremonies to water still performed in
the area.

As we visit sites and peoples
in our approaches to indigeneity, often there is call for ceremonial formality.
We opt to respect local tradition and share in "world alive"
ceremony, purely traditional or blended with other beliefs that reflect a basis
of respect.

Just these brief visits
around San Juan de la Maguana and elsewhere in Dominican Republic offered
evidence of rich orality and currents of identity and belief of considerable
indigeneity. The challenge of our research and exhibition project is how to continue
to gather and interpret this layered reality, how to
decipher, correspond, compare across islands and localities the evidence of
indigeneity in the Caribbean world.

—Jose Barreiro

Jose Barreiro (Taíno) is head of the Office of Latin America within the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.